 There is the legend of a shadowy aboriginal people known as ""Te Kahui Tipua"", or 'the band of ogres', who were destroyed by later arrivals called Te Rapuwai.It appears likely that not only Te Rapuwai, in whose time the forests of Canterbury were said to have been burned and the Moa exterminated, but also the Waitaha, who followed them in the earliest period, were established in the South Island long before the arrival of the first waves of the 14th century Polynesian 'fleet' in New Zealand.The Waitaha who at that time were occupying the Eastern districts of the South Island, appear to have been a numerous people, with a large Pa near Mairangi and Kapukariki and other settlements on the banks of the Rakaia River.